McCain: We’ll Try to Pass Immigration Changes After GOP Primaries

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Photo Credit: AFPSen. John McCain (R-AZ) gave the clearest indication that proponents of comprehensive immigration reform may make their final–and strongest–push to get legislation passed next year after House Republicans make it through their primaries.

“I think conventional wisdom is that time is not on our side,” McCain told reporters on Monday after an event in Chicago. “But there are a number of members of Congress who have primaries and when those primaries are done, they may be more inclined to address the issue of comprehensive immigration reform.”

President Barack Obama has urged Congress to pass immigration reform legislation this year. House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is reportedly going to bring legislation to the floor within the next month and other House Republican leaders have indicated support for piecemeal pieces of legislation that can make it to conference with the Senate, where proponents and opponents of immigration reform had said a pathway to citizenship will prevail.

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Sean Penn: ‘I Think It’s A Good Idea’ to Have Ted Cruz Committed (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP“There’s a mental health problem in Congress,” says actor and liberal activist Sean Penn. The president could solve the problem “by committing them by executive order,” Penn told CNN’s Piers Morgan Monday night.

Asked if Penn would have “people like Ted Cruz” committed, Penn said, “He is my American brother. I won’t — I think we should take care of him, he is in, he’s the trouble.”

“Well, actually have him committed,” Morgan followed up.

“Yeah, I think it’s a good idea,” Penn said.

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NBC: Small Business Owner’s Premiums Increase By 400% Under Obamacare (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube NBC’s Lisa Myers profiled several people who are receiving health plan cancellation letters due to Obamacare Tuesday.

For example, George Schwab of North Carolina, said he was “perfectly happy” with his plan from Blue Cross Blue Shield, which also insured his wife for a $228 monthly premium. But this past September, he was surprised to receive a letter saying his policy was no longer available.

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Soaring Number Of Cubans Are Entering The United States Through Mexican Border

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Photo Credit: GETTY IMAGESThe easing by the Cuban government of restrictions on traveling abroad has led to a rise in the number of Cubans who try to enter the United States through the Mexican border, the Miami Herald reports.

Undocumented Cubans stopped at the U.S.-Mexican border totaled 2,300 from January through August, more than double the 994 in the same time frame last year, the newspaper says, citing Mexican government figures.

Authorities estimate that roughly 13,000 got to the border undetected between Sept. 2012 and Sept. 2013, the Herald says.

The theory for the rise is that Cubans who make it to the U.S. border benefit from this nation’s “wet-foot-dry-foot” policy, which holds that any Cuban national who puts foot on U.S. soil may stay in the country. Those who are stopped at sea often are repatriated.

Meanwhile, Cuban officials say travel abroad has risen 35 percent since the island’s government loosened restrictions this year.

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McCaskill Demands Explanation Over Staged Arrival Ceremonies for Fallen Soldiers

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Photo Credit: AP2011Sen. Claire McCaskill is pressing the Pentagon for answers following reports — and an admission by the U.S. Department of Defense — that it staged “arrival ceremonies” for fallen soldiers.

“This is even more evidence that these recovery efforts are suffering from systematic problems and a lack of coordinated leadership,” McCaskill said in a statement. “Families in this community just want officials to be honest and forthright about the government’s efforts – instead, what they’re often getting is false hope and fake ceremonies.”

Joint Prisoners of War, Missing in Action Accounting Command — a unit in the Defense Department — has been holding arrival ceremonies for seven years, with flag-draped coffins being carried off cargo planes as though they held the remains of American troops that had just been returned, according to an initial investigation by NBC News. However, the remains typically were on site before each ceremony began, at a lab where they were undergoing analysis. The report focused on ceremonies at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii.

“These ceremonies, which have been held numerous times over the past seven years, reportedly represented to veterans and families that the remains had been recently recovered and were arriving in the United States for the first time,” McCaskill wrote in her Oct. 25 letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

Following the report, the Pentagon acknowledged that the ceremonies were more of a “pre-planned” memorial than a series of actual events unfolding. The Pentagon also confirmed allegations that planes used in the ceremonies at the military base in Hawaii couldn’t even fly and were towed into position.

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Video: Even Liberal New York Magazine Turning Against Obama’s Obamacare BS

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Photo Credit: Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesYou know things are bad for President Barack Obama when New York Magazine, no bastion of conservatism, is producing videos pointing out your lies.

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Conservative Group’s New Attack on Mitch McConnell Dismissed as ‘Dumb’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: YouTube The advocacy group Senate Conservatives Action announced Tuesday that it will spend six figures on a new television ad bashing Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell — but national Republicans are brushing off the buy.

Senate Conservatives Action, the PAC of the Senate Conservatives Fund that last week endorsed McConnell’s Republican primary opponent, Matt Bevin, will spend $330,000 to air the television ad across Kentucky, the group said. The 30-second spot attacks McConnell for his role in negotiations to end a 16-day government shutdown by restoring government funding, but without blocking the implementation of Obamacare.

“Conservatives asked Mitch McConnell to lead the fight against Obamacare,” the ad’s narrator says. “He didn’t listen.”

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Democrat Aide Does About-Face on Obamacare

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Photo Credit: WND After defending Obamacare from the vilest of insults from angry citizens, a former Democrat congressional aide says that she’s finally given up and admitted that she was wrong.

What prompted the turnabout?

Sue Klinkhamer is one of an estimated millions who, contrary to President Obama’s famous promise, has received, or is about to receive, a policy-cancellation notice.

After getting hers in the mail, she fired off an email to her former boss, Rep. Bill Foster, D-Ill., and other Democratic colleagues, the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Klinkhamer wrote: “I spent two years defending Obamacare. I had constituents scream at me, spit at me and call me names that I can’t put in print.”

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DHS Approves Over 80% of DREAMers Who Apply for Legal Status

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Photo Credit: APThe Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has approved over 80 percent of young illegal immigrants who have applied for its Deferred Action program, an administrative version of the DREAM Act.

The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said they have granted legal status to 474,000 of the 580,000 illegal aliens who have applied.

“Last June, DHS announced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals process, allowing young people who meet the guidelines to seek a two year provisional legal status to remain in the United States,” wrote Maria Odom, the ombudsman for USCIS, on Oct. 24.

“Our office played a key role in this effort by assisting with individual cases, sharing stakeholder feedback with USCIS and suggesting improvements to the application process,” she said.

“Already, more than 580,000 individuals have requested deferred action, and after a thorough review of each of those cases, including a background check, more than 474,000 requests have been approved, allowing these young people to continue to contribute to the country they call home.”

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Maryland 20-Year-Old Dies Never Having Aged (+video)

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Photo Credit: Times Online/GDA Photo Service/NewscomBrooke Greenberg, who baffled scientists because she never aged, has died at the age of 20, never having developed beyond the physical size of an infant or the mental capacity of a 2-year-old.

The daughter of Howard and Melanie Greenberg from Reisterstown, Md., Brooke is one of about a dozen children in the world who have what some call syndrome X — a kind of Benjamin Button disorder that prevents them from aging.

Her funeral was Sunday at a synagogue outside Baltimore, family friends confirmed.

“The family is doing as well as can be expected,” Chris Cole, a colleague of Brooke’s father, told ABCNews.com today. “They are going through their traditions this week — the shiva.”

Brooke has been pushed around in a stroller all her life. In 2009, when her family was interviewed on ABC’s “20/20,” Brook weighed 16 pounds and was 30 inches tall. She didn’t speak, but she laughed when she was happy, and clearly recognized her three sisters: Emily, now 26; Caitlin, now 23; and Carly, now 17.

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